Originally published by Floating World, May 2019
A JOURNEY NOT A DESTINATION
By Dustin ChangDaniel & Clara, a pair of experimental filmmakers who describe themselves as two halves of one artist, present their latest work, Notes From A Journey: a travelogue of sorts filled with startling visual and aural landscapes. And it’s a thing of beauty – an examination of internal psyche through nature and vice versa. It’s a great companion piece to their Studio Diaries, a series of 100 visual essays documenting their creative processes for a period of time.
Notes From A Journey starts out like a typical travelogue. We see the horizon from the train window. Its various English pastoral of greens and yellows. It’s comforting to follow the outlines of the gentle hills. The uninterrupted outline of the hills and lulls of the locomotive give the sense of calm and continuation. Then the thin red line appears, going across the frame. The background color slowly changes from sky blue to black then back to blue. The line’s angle changes and it moves up and down. It tricks your vision as if the line is not straight. There are hues, there are textures, there are natural and artificial soundscapes.
There is a shift in the middle of the film. The double exposure of thorny trees with scathing noise changes the perspective of the film from our passive pair observing to them on the forefront. We see them searching and listening with modern equipment in their tent at night. What are they looking for? Merely recording the sound of nature at night, a paranormal activity, a reenactment of what field zoologist do…? We are still at the infancy of the great visual & aural medium. Daniel & Clara make a point that they are always searching.
It’s not the destination but it’s the journey. Daniel & Clara flip through the pictures of countless standing rocks of Avebury, lay them down on the bed. It’s as if they are searching for something solid, something permanent, something that will ground them. Silbury Hill in Avebury, a landmark prominently featured many times in the film, shot in different methods and formats is a man-made monument from ancient times. Its physicality and presence is tremendous, yet it is artificial. Whatever we see and feel solid and permanent, they are not. We see the silhouette of Daniel & Clara’s sharp features in the dark room, then there is smoldering smoke hanging above the bed. Notes From A Journey reminds you that the illusive el dorado of cinema is not the destination but the journey itself.